Changing Winds
by InnocentGuilt
Summary: How only a few gusts of wind can change people into who they never really thought they'd be.


A/N: I watched Pan's Labyrinth, and it had a lullaby, and I liked it, and I smoked this cigar thing (which impaired the ability to feel stress), and I drank…because I drink all the time, and this is what happened.

Good story, eh?

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts so would've been a tragedy had I owned it.

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Sora died in a hurricane not too long after they returned to the island. He and his parents had died when the hundred plus miles per hour of hurricane wind crumpled their house. Freak accident, the innocent bystanders murmured. Damn shame, said his teachers, who marked his out of their grade books. Tragedy, said his family members, who cried out of duty, not out of mourning.

No one really truly cared about the boy that they remembered…but not really.

Kairi and Riku…they were knocked off center.

Three days later, at his funeral, practically everyone came. But no one should have been there. No one cared. They showed up because they vaguely remembered a little brunette boy running around with Kairi and Riku. They remembered whispers of a shadow that played tag with them. And someone on the other side of Riku's sparring sword. They remember someone who used to play the prince in Kairi's play game of Princess and Prince. They remembered what Sora signified, but not what he was.

That was the first time Kairi had ever really see Riku cry, and cry unabashedly.

They didn't look at the body in the casket. They were completely determined never to see their friend's corpse after they had helped pull his mangled body from the ruins of his house. It was enough to last them a lifetime.

He spent the night with Kairi. Her parents didn't mind. They were both in mourning. Surely the wouldn't, couldn't do something like_ that_. And they didn't. They sat in her room silent as the dead, remembering everything they had ever said to Sora, everything they didn't say to Sora, everything they wished they could've said to Sora.

Riku accidentally dozed off for an hour or two, long enough for Kairi's parents to fall asleep, but not long enough to make up for the days on end of sitting on his cot, thinking of Sora's limp body. Kairi had disappeared, and he thought that maybe she had gone to sleep on the couch in the living room, since he had none so graciously taken her bed. However, when he stepped onto the cold hardwood flooring of the living room, gazing into the black living area as though it were bright as day, he saw nothing.

The light from the kitchen signaled well as anything else where she was. And no sooner did he step into the entrance than did she demand his silence.

"I have a headache." She whispered, using an ashtray to peel ash off of one of her mother's flavored cigars, which he never knew she smoked. On the table in front of her, there was a glass of amber liquid, an empty glass, and a half empty bottle of rum, from her father's liquor cabinet.

He nodded his understanding, having had that feeling the entire week. He leaned in the entrance, not knowing what to say to her, and even if he did, not knowing how to say it. He thought he should tell her that he was in a better place, but he had personally been in that 'better place' as had Sora. It was only a swirling vortex of other souls. Not much better than earth, really. Maybe he thought to tell her that it was peaceful, and that he couldn't feel pain anymore. Maybe that would be better. But she wouldn't understand. She wouldn't understand how even that sounded a curse to him.

She never really noticed the stretched appearance his face seemed to get at being home.

Come to think of it…neither had he. He never really notice until…

"It was so odd!" Riku exclaimed. "His face looked so…"

"Peaceful." Kairi supplied, exhaling the smoke in her lungs from the cigar he never knew she smoked.

It was odd for her to say too, he knew it; by the way her mouth seemed confounded by the word. Like it was a foreign language only entertaining a notion of being understood. He knew she had been just as awed to see his jaw relaxed. Just as he had been entranced by the loose joints of his hands. "Yeah, peaceful, and I always thought that I would want him to look even a quarter as peaceful after what I had done, what we all had done to him." He faded off, because he really hadn't. He hadn't known it consciously.

"But?"

"But I never wanted to wake him up and make him more miserable than I could possible imagine than I did when I saw him." He felt guilt wash over him at admitting that to her. "I wanted to wake him up and tell him every stress inducing thought that ever crossed my mind just so his face would gain that small bit of tension back. I wanted him to look more human, than angel."

"Riku…" She said helplessly.

"It's terrible, I know. And as terrible as that is, I can't help thinking it, not even now."

Kairi didn't say anything and when she didn't, Riku couldn't help but wish Sora were there, because Sora always knew what to do. He knew how to make everyone talk, smile, laugh…even if it was at his expense.

Riku couldn't help it. "I miss Sora."

Kairi nodded, emptily. Taking another drag of the cigar he never knew she knew how to smoke she slid her glass of amber red liquid to the space in front of the seat beside her. "Have some rum." She said. "It dulls the pain a little."

Things would never quite be the same without the shadow that everyone remembered, and Riku knew that with the first swig of rum that he never thought would taste so good.

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A/N: The true reason why I do not write when halfway self-made retarded.

Review me, anyhow.

InnocentGuilt


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